CLA Book Club

In the Crossfire of History: Women’s War Resistance Discourse in the Global South is an edited collection that incorporates literary works, testimonies, autobiographies, women’s resistance movements and films that add to the conversation on the resilience of women in the global south. The collection focuses on Palestine, Kashmir, Syria, Kurdistan, Congo, Argentina, Central America, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Women in Wartime is the first study of theatrical representations of women with intimate connections to military men. Drawing upon her extensive expertise in gender, performance studies, popular culture and archival studies, Backscheider traces the rise of the London theatre’s acceptance that one of its responsibilities was to support its country’s wars. Rather than focusing on the “warrior women” on the battlefield, Backscheider explores the lives and work of sweethearts, wives, mothers, barmaids and more.

A collection of Louisiana poems, fables, tales, novels, song lyrics and historical texts in French in an accessible format. Works from the 1680s to 1900 that reflect the diversity of voices present throughout Louisiana’s history: men, women, explorers, political leaders, Native Americans, Africans and African Americans and Creoles. Language varieties are also represented, with passages in Louisiana Creole as spoken by enslaved peoples and their descendants, and the French of the Acadians.

Resident Strangers restores immigrant laborers to their place in the history of the New South. The Chinese, Italian and Austro-Hungarian laborers who came to Alabama in the late 19th and early 20th centuries found themselves precariously poised between white employers and Black workers. Their presence and agency complicated racial categorization, disrupted labor relations and diversified southern communities, bringing to Alabama the turbulent world of empire building and global labor migration.

Who governs? With recent controversies in the United States related to confederate monuments, transgender rights and fracking, for example, the answer is: it depends and is subject to change. This book examines the sources behind state-local conflict to better understand where this critical intergovernmental relationship may be breaking down, and to ultimately identify solutions and policy tools that build upon the strengths of state and local governments.

Unconventional natural gas production via fracking has ignited debate, challenged regulators and added to the complexity of 21st-century natural resource management. Through a longitudinal study, we examine how the management of natural resources functions relative to specific regulatory actions including inspections, violations and the use of regulatory tools. Ultimately, we find that factors as disparate as goals, elected officials, data, inspectors and the use of technology form a context that, in turn, shapes compliance.

Afternoons with Harper Lee chronicles the 12-year friendship Wayne Flynt and his late wife, Dartie, shared with Lee. Part memoir, part biography, this book offers a unique window into the life and mind of one of America’s best-loved writers. Flynt, Harper Lee and her sisters learned a great deal from each other, and though this is not a history book, their shared interest in Alabama and its history made this extraordinary work possible.

The Sociology of Mental Health and Illness explains sociology’s key contributions to our understanding of mental health and serves as a strong counterpoint to the medical approach to the subject. Using both micro- and macro-level theories, the text shows the subjective nature of mental illness and systems of diagnosis and treatment and emphasizes how social conditions and relationships create life pathways toward mental health and psychological struggles.

The 1898 lynching of Tom Johnson and Joe Kizer is retold in this groundbreaking book. Unlike other histories, this study focuses on the objects associated with the lynching. This material culture approach uncovers how people tried to integrate the meaning of the lynching into their everyday lives through objects. Gaddis showcases an approach to objects as materials of history and memory, insisting we live in a world suffused with the material traces of racial violence.

Historically, the National Park Service has struggled to identify and preserve post-emancipation Black school buildings. This study identifies the historic context of early Black education in the South and provides a framework for locating historic resources (buildings and landscapes) that can help tell these important stories to public audiences. NPS historians will use this work to develop new preservation and interpretative initiatives to incorporate this vital history across the agency’s network of historic sites.

The Water Quality Act of 1987 ushered in a new era of clean water policy to the United States. This book examines the patterns of state program resource distribution using case studies and analysis of state and national program data. This book is important for researchers from a range of disciplines, including water, environmental and infrastructure policy, federalism/intergovernmental relations, intergovernmental administration and natural resource management, as well as policymakers and policy advocates.

This book examines the impact of factors that can help explain differences in e-participation in different countries. The book reviews the extant literature and develops a conceptual framework supported by theories from the public policy and socio-technical traditions. The authors utilize survey data for 143 countries to test a comparative model of e-participation. The findings reveal the role of technology as a mediator as well as a moderator for institutions’ impact on e-participation.

With cross-pollination of the public administration and policy implementation literatures, this book presents a framework to explore the use of cooperation, coordination and collaboration among organizations working together to restore coastal habitats and replenish aquatic resources on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The combination of theory development and testing provides a theoretical framework through which to think about interorganizational interactions, and a case study to illustrate the ways in which these complex relationships manifest themselves in practice.

This volume examines the uniqueness of southern politics and the policy choices of southern states, compared to states outside the South. The authors examine six different policy arenas: voting access, gun control, health care, reproductive rights, water and COVID-19 pandemic response. They conclude that the South as a region is unique because of the exceptional degree of one-party control evident in the South, coupled with a long-standing preoccupation with partisanship and race-based politics.

When the U.S. interstate system was constructed, many highways were purposefully routed through Black, Brown and poor communities. These neighborhoods were destroyed, isolated from the rest of the city or left to deteriorate over time. Justice and the Interstates examines the toll that the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System has taken on vulnerable communities over the past seven decades, details efforts to restore these often-segregated communities and makes recommendations for moving forward.

Ohio Planning and Zoning Law is the only comprehensive treatise on Ohio land use controls and related planning and economic development issues. It offers a step-by-step guide to Ohio’s permit process as well as in-depth analysis of state legislation governing planning, economic development and affordable housing. The text emphasizes Ohio statutes and caselaw, along with significant decisions from other state and federal courts.

This in-depth exploration of emotions in the ancient Near East illuminates the rich and complex worlds of feelings encompassed within the literary and material remains of this remarkable region, home to many of the world’s earliest cities and empires, and lays critical foundations for future study.